Happy Halloween

Writers are ghouls of the most persnickety sort.

I don’t want your blood. I actually have no use for that, but I do want to pick your brain, steal your experiences. And I’m not content with just being a voyeuristic ghoul. I want to know how it felt when your baby said his first word, or what you were thinking when you smiled at Aunt Mabel’s funeral last spring.

It’s cool that you can ride a skateboard down the railing at city hall without getting arrested, but what was your first thought when that bone in your arm snapped and popped out through your shirt? What was it like to dive headfirst over the waterfall and how did you learn to do a somersault like that? When you sleep in a sling two thousand feet up on a cliff, what do you dream?

How do you keep track of all the jurors you are questioning without a notepad and what happens if you realize you can’t do it, but there you are? What makes you cry and what makes you laugh so hard you almost pee in your pants?

What is the worst thing you think you ever did? What was the sweetest? Are you afraid to look bad, or sweet? I have a million questions. Just like Aunt Lu used to line her bird cage with the daily news, I line my thoughts with news of you! Then I mix them all up and create characters in the image of a dozen different people. No costumes necessary!